NWN2 - Review @ Pro-G

November 30th, 2006, 23:44

A modest 7/10 is the score for NWN2 at Pro-G in their review. There are a number of minor complaints, with the interface coming in for the most criticism:

Perhaps most disconcerting, however, is what Obsidian has done to the game's interface. The intuitive and elegant radial pop-up menu from the prequel has been replaced by a cumbersome context-sensitive menu that actually makes it harder to assign spells or abilities to your character's taskbar and is a definite backwards step. Needing to drag the mouse while right-clicking to get the menu to appear at all is counter-intuitive and an annoyingly needless complication. Worse, you can no longer hold down the Tab key to find objects that you can interact with, meaning that you have to revert to old school "run the mouse cursor over everything" tactics to prevent you missing a chest containing an important plot item. There's nothing more irksome than having to traipse all the way across two maps to pick up a pair of gauntlets that you can't complete a quest without, because the chest they are hidden in was tucked away in a dark corner…

Punter X

Originally Posted by Punter X
isn't it also mentioned in the tutorial?

I think it is one of the very first things mentioned. If I recall correctly it is when you're looking for the chest with the furs that you're to sell to the merchant at the fair.

I mean, come on man. Not only is it mentioned in the manual AND in the tutorial but it is also a reconfigurable key … that's 3 different references that he missed. For crying out loud.

-- "Chess in particular had always annoyed him. It was the dumb way the pawns went off and slaughtered their fellow pawns while the kings lounged about doing nothing that always got to him; if only the pawns united, maybe talked the rooks around, the whole board could've been a republic in a dozen moves."- Commander Vimes in Thud! by Terry Pratchett

Originally Posted by Prime Junta
A modest 7/10 is the score for NWN2 at Pro-G in their review. There are a number of minor complaints, with the interface coming in for the most criticism:More information.

I know we have to be objective in posting news, but really that word review ought to be in quotes.

Is it my imagination, or has the gaming media done a positively piss poor job of covering PC games lately? This seems to be an ongoing trend. Dismal coverage and sloppy reviewing of everything that's not World of Warcraft.

Originally Posted by doctor_kaz
Is it my imagination, or has the gaming media done a positively piss poor job of covering PC games lately? This seems to be an ongoing trend. Dismal coverage and sloppy reviewing of everything that's not World of Warcraft.

I haven't seen much to the contrary … even outside of RPG's. Some good, some bad … just all over the map!

you can also turn the Z option off but only at the client level. Why a client would want to do this and not the server is beyond me. Calling it "worse" is ridiculous because so many of us modders want that quick cheat turned off - or at least make it based on the players search ability for their visual range.

there is still ongoing debate about old the radial versus the more fallout like UI but as Obsidian points out is a) NWN1 people are used to the radial whereas those people new to NWN2 actually find it more cumbersome (so they say) and b) the UI s easily customizable. There are quite a number of new ones available on the Vault already.

Originally Posted by doctor_kaz
Is it my imagination, or has the gaming media done a positively piss poor job of covering PC games lately? This seems to be an ongoing trend. Dismal coverage and sloppy reviewing of everything that's not World of Warcraft.

You might have a point as far as the commercial sites (like IGN, GameSpy, GameSpot, 1UP etc) are concerned. It's probably a result of the rather insane number of high profile game releases this fall/winter. From Sims expansions to BF2142, Company of Heroes, Gothic III, SC: Double Agent, MTW 2, NFS: Carbon, several Warhammer games/expansions, NWN II, F.E.A.R expansion, LotR: Battle for Middle Earth expansion, Star Wars EAW expansion, DMoMM, Oblivion expansion, Anno 1701, The Guild II, all the way to the WoW: BC beta those paid guys/writers must be running on a very tight schedule which leaves very little time for actually playing most of these games for more than a couple hours, leave alone finish any of them. That might explain (not excuse) the recent relatively high number of seemingly rather superficial reviews/previews/beta reports.

For me, getting used to the radial menu in NWN2 was a very big step - as I have gotten used to the interface used in Inf. Engines games such as BG1 and BG2 other such games. However, after a while I got the hang of it.

Afaik, Obsidian did just backtrack to the interface used in the Inf. Eng.'s games.

However, I can certainly understand why one would say that this interface is a bit lacking compared to the radial menu, if you have played say Final Fintasy games or console games, before you play NWN2.

I'm not sure if this is sarcasm or troll bait? an honest review maybe, but one from someone who doesn't take two seconds to pick up the manual, check the forums, or have two clues.

its clear Obsidian just hates radial menus and is in love with their Fallout style menu. I found the thing a little annoying to be honest. Planescape brought in the Radial menu and that thing go pretty popular. ToEE took radial menus to new heights of tedium IMO.

But this is one of Obsidian's heavy handedness in their development (I got accused of that a lot on my own server ). Another one would be Turn Undead. Turn Undead now stuns them if they fail instead of them panicking and running off. To fix it requires a 2da hak.